What can be said about Sony’s Tablet P design that we all know and… know? Takeshi Goto, head of Sony’s Vaio and Mobile Product division, had a few words to share with Engadget China about the process leading up to the release of the clamshell device. Goto even went so far as to show off an early prototype cobbled together from two Vaio UXs.

Apparently, the Tablet P had been in development since the end of the PDA era, envisioned as a device with a large screen that could be stuffed into a jacket pocket like a wallet. On the actual development process, the man in charge notes that the clamshell device had a much longer development time than the Tablet S — the two were only combined for marketing purposes before release. He also mentions that the company had considered 5, 6, and 7-inch sizes — as well as X86/Windows and ARM/Linux architecture/OS combinations — before settling on the 5.5-inch ARM/Android setup (soon to be updated to Android 4.0) we have today. Hopefully, Sony won't take quite so long to execute on its new design ideas in the future.